As Linux celebrates its 20th birthday, its biggest success – mobile – is turning into its worst headache.
Thanks to Google's Android, and in turn thanks to the success of Steve Jobs' iPhone and iPad, Linux has found a fresh lease of life.
Smartphones running the Android version of Linux account for 39 per cent of the market; …

COMMENTS

Page:

Once upon a time ...

There was this "rebel" OS called <x>, initially gaining use amongst "geeks" and scoffed at by business. But it's use grew and it became more popular, and business started to adopt it. But the various businesses supporting and selling it all wanted to differentiate "their" version, and so the different versions diverged. This was bad for users as it meant they couldn't but "Program <y> for <x>" but had to hope that the vendor of <y> had done a version for the variety of <x> the customer ran.

This forking and incompatibility held back adoption of <x>, and eventually it was sidelines as <z> came along and offered "one OS for everything". <z> became all embracing, crushing competition by lock-in and powerful marketing.

First time around x=Unix and z=Microsoft. Now is history repeating with x=Linux and z=Apple ?

Really?

Arrrggghhhh, WTF?

If you're talking servers in the first story line (Unix vs. MS) then I can only assume you weren't an IT geek in the late 90s when Wintel servers really caught fire in the Enterprise world. Speaking at least for myself and the majority of the folks I worked with back then, yeah Wintel servers were neat and easy to manage, but in comparison to many of the systems we replaced with them they were toys (this was in the NT 3.51 and just getting into NT 4 era). We went from a smaller number of really large, powerful, stable and *expensive* UNIX servers to managing an order of magnitude more small, unstable (in comparison to what we were used to), weak (again, in comparison), and and cheap servers... which wound up increasing our workload significantly. We were definitely not cheering having to manage (pulling numbers out of my butt here but in some areas this was the case) 100 Wintel servers vs. 20 Unix boxes.

Saying that it's now repeating itself for mobile is even more off base... Apple was ahead in market share before Android caught/surpassed it... and, as far as I know, Android is still growing faster than Android despite its problems. Could the current situation result in Apple taking back the lead... sure, but I don't think that's a given.

What really drove Microsoft surpassing UNIX in the server space had nothing to do with fragmentation and compatibility but *EVERYTHING* to do with price. I would tend to say the same thing about why Android has overtaken Apple in the mobile space... and the same thinking applies to why Android *hasn't* overtaken Apple in the fondleslab category (most of the feature-comparable Android slabs are about the same price as Apple, so why wouldn't someone go with the market leader when the cost difference is negligible?).

It's all fine and well to use terms like "rebel OS" to make a fun-to-read narrative, but making it all about fragmentation and apps, and completely neglecting the economics of the situation is really, really off-base. If you want a can't-miss formula for picking winners, I'd say with confidence that the cheapest solution that covers the market's must-haves (base functionality, apps, stability, UX, etc - and that is not something easy to define) will wind up with the majority market share every time.

Of course, market share does not really a define success either... TBH I'm not really sure how much market share Apple really wants - if it's market share vs. profit margin I think they have their limits.

I could point out

that Linux is just the kernel, not the whole OS, and that the Linux kernel has massively widespread use other than on servers, desktops and Android. Embedded Linux drives all sorts of stuff from your set top box to your broadband router to bits of hardware that you didn't even know existed.

Disruptive.....

Straw man article

The whole point of open source software is allowing it to be forked. The FSF/GPL political shenanigans have long just been an annoyance.

Linus is probably right not to be worried about the fork. Android is out exploring uses that have little relevance to server environments. He should think about moving to a BSD licence and a possible merge with the NetBSD code base for the kernel.

Moving to BSD license ?

Who are you, Steve Ballmer ?! If Linux became what it is right now it is all because of the GPL. How many posters here beside you have mentioned the word BSD even though the *BSDs are on par with Linux in every possible way ? Go to your assigned corner, face to the wall!

and also....

to bring GNU/Linux on the desktop enough is just.... to quit lobbying MS Windows everywhere. Kids go to school and do not learn how to use computers, they get addicted to Windows instead (paid by their parents via taxes). Students get to college, learn nothing about computers and pay for MS licenses. So, what is the Linux' "market share" again?

Despite the fact that GNU/Linux desktop has matured so that it surpassed MS WIndows long time ago.... a circulus viciosus it really is.

Web Apps are for people who don't like Copy & Paste

On a project I'm working on currently, we decided to test out Google Docs for a bug tracking spreadsheet (no time for a fancier solution and better than spreadsheet files in emails).

So that worked great until users couldn't copy and paste spreadsheet sections for reporting. It's not an easily solved problem too because of the potential abuse a malicious website can make of copy and paste.

Not every app needs copy and paste

I specifically said timesheets & expenses. There are plenty of web based solutions for those sorts of things. And holiday / vacation planner. And document / cms systems. etc. etc.

Basically there is no reason that an enterprise should require their employees to be running thick clients for this stuff. If by chance someone does need to work locally on data then I'm sure some solutions would offer import / export from a spreadsheet.

Re:and also

I don't agree with the kids addicted to Windows statement. I'd say it applied previously (Gen Y) but due to the advent of smartphones, ipads etc this generation of kids will be platform agnostic. My own 4 year old is happy with a linux laptop or using the imac, iphone, or windows machine - they interact with the applications not the OS (from their perspective). All they need to know is how to start the app - logging in is much of a muchness on any desktop OS. Even the two year old will have a go after watching their sibbling (all walled-garden naturally). Ipads/tablets/smartphones are also great learning tools for kids as touching the screen is intuitive. Windows is on its downward spiral in the home from this perspective.

"That said, the "Ribbon" has been a spectacular commercial success on both the Mac and PC platforms --- and the geek in IT still can't fathom why."

I hate, loathe and detest the "Ribbon". ...But this geek knows why. Watching any novice or non-geek learning to adapt to it, I just have to bite my lip--we're a twain apart.

[It's why I'd never enter politics--not in a democracy anyway.]

"The productivity of the clerical worker. Staffing. Training. Retention. These are the things that matter to the office manager. To senior management."

Absolutely key. Senior management couldn't give a damn about the niceties of one IT solution over another so long as costs are kept to a minimum, things sort of work and the staff don't assassinate the IT head or declare war on the IT dept. Whether we like it or not, for general PC use, a Microsoft solution is the best fit in such circumstances. It's the closest we get to peace.

It irks me to say it and I wish there were a better solution. The facts speak for themselves, unfortunately.

Sheesh!

You put a link to Florian Mueller's "I didn't know about Android licence violations until recently" blog post (showing what kind of finger-on-the-pulse "expert" he is if he didn't know that was going on) but not one to the master list:

http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/android_tablets/

How about reporting the facts instead of some pundit's self-promotional bulletins which happen to coincide with the daily Register shit-slinging by other pundits who were generally caught napping by recent goings-on and who now seem to think that their reputations can be saved by back-pedalling, airbrushing and claiming that they will one day be vindicated (at least according to their own articles)?

It's also a non flyer

Linus Torvalds and other major kernel developers rejected GPLv3 for two main reasons. a) they felt it limited freedom to impose moral clauses on their code (which is what they regard the DRM stuff as), b) the kernel was expressly licensed as GPLv2, not "GPLv2 or later" so it would be virtually impossible to upgrade anyway given the number of different authors.

Even if it did upgrade (and it won't). it wouldn't a blind bit of difference to some Chinese no-names. If the terms of GPLv2 don't make them abide by their obligations then what chance has GPLv3 got?

time to reread "the cathedral and the bazaar"!

It seems the author missed some keypoints in the open source philosophy. Forks are good in bazaar style (linux) development. As long as code is returned to the community. Linux has allways come stronger out of forks.

Tough Google is lax in returning the code it has repeatedly said it will do so. Even if the twain will never meat, linux is not dependend on it. It will live or die by its own power to inovate. So lets wait and see and not create fud.

wait for it

Android is a lot more than Linux

The article makes it sound like Android is just a fork of Linux for phones. A better description woud be that Android is a smartphone operating system that uses Linux for some boring kernel functions. The real work is done in other parts, like Dalvik (their java-like language virtual machine).

Linux provides a workable free kernel that a lot of programmers are used to. So it gets embedded in a lot of things. What people do in userland above it is none of the kernel's business, so there's no GPL violation when it's closed-source. Linux is most at home in the server world, where it's now the most popular flavor of unix, mainly on price and flexibility. Even Linus doesn't care about the mass-market desktop; unix-type OSs are lousy at that. (MacOS X has a sort of unix-like API layer atop its own Darwin microkernel and below its proprietary Mac-specific layers, but it's again a long way from a plain unix box. Even DEC's VMS could eventually run recompiled Posix applications.) Well, maybe they wouldn't be lousy at it if somebody cared, but it's hard to compete with Windows and MacOS.

Not.

That Wikipedia table is for computers visible from the internet. The next table down in the article is for servers sold through commercial channels. Windows is way ahead of Linux here. Dont' forget that this second category includes servers whose only function is to serve hoards of workers with Windows desktops... so they run Exchange, various Windows services and, these days, slews of VMs.

I'm quite puzzled!

[quote]Those running Linux are letting the forking continue because of what Android has done[/quote]. Forking FOSS is normal, legal, beneficial and largely accepted by anyone who has the slightest idea about software freedoms. I'm totally baffled that Mr. Clarke can't grasp the simple but fundamental concept that you can't use GPL software to restrict end-user freedoms, including forking.

Oh, and by the way, speaking for myself I don't see why companies are going to rush buying and installing Windows on their hundreds of thousands of Linux servers just because the Linux kernel has been forked into Android so a little more detail for Mr. Clarke's theory on this subject would be appreciated. Maybe I am wrong, but does anybody else see Google or Oracle going back to Windows and at the mercy of Microsoft just because Google has forked the Linux kernel ? Let's not be silly!

If Android fails.........

What complete twaddle

A mutant variety running on a type of mobile phone isn't going to determine Linux's success or failure in any other domains, certainly not as measured by some bean counter applying whatever metrics fit his predetermined conclusion, to whatever data he feels like pulling out of his ass.

Had you compared Linux's market share to embedded systems instead of data centre servers you would have gotten a completetely different picture, and one that is just as relevant to Android (or indeed mainstream Linux) - i.e. not very.

Besides

There are lots of Linux forks already for realtime functionality, additional security, extra file systems, distributions. They tend to loosely track the mainline often available as patchfiles but they're still forks. e.g. Red Hat's version of the kernel has piles of modifications which are not in the mainline.

Oh Hell! I missed it.

Not again...

"Linux is licensed under the GPLv2, whose provisions include that state changes must be made available to all."

Please, please, show us unwashed masses the specific place in GPLv2 where this is required (as opposed to "_if_ you distribute it to someone you must give _him_ the full source and all the GPL-defined rights".)

Forking? So what?

Forking? So what?

I now have a smart phone that doesn't encourage me to keep a copy of Windows. The fact that it has "deviated" from the kernel I run on that desktop machine doesn't really bother me. As others have said, it was put out there to be used and "forks" are just a part of the scenery.

Devices that are more open than "that other Unix" are always welcome and generally useful.

Shame on Theregister!

Instead of wasting time on Stevie Jobs' resignation, full of thoughts how it would affect the Earth's orbit, there should be a better article about 20'th birthday of a very important project. As an acknowledgement... At least for the theregister mag.

Ludicrous scare mongering.

What an utterly bizarre article. Hopping around like some mad grasshopper between unrelated subjects and not understanding them.

Linux isn't an operating system (it's an operating system kernel), so what the fate or direction of Linux on smartphone operating systems has to do directly and with the fate of the GNU/Linux operating system on servers and desktop computers is beyond me.

Someone may have forked Linux?

Well butter my backside and call me a scone ... what on earth are you on? Of course someone's forked Linux. Just about every GNU/Linux distribution patches and effectively forks Linux. The GNU/GPL licence allows people to do this, it's something they are supposed to be able to do. It's not a problem, it's the whole point!

And btw., read the GNU GPL, it's easy, it's not very long and you may start to understand it's provisions for sharing code when you distribute software covered by the GNU GPL.

I once thought that the Register might have a few reporters who had a clue.

Interesting viewpoint...

...but it misses one of the key strengths of the Linux model. Android isn't "Linux on mobiles", it is the popular one right now. Samsung's Bada can run on the Linux kernel. If I was way smarter, I could fork Linux and roll my own code for my smartphone. Closed ecosystems do not offer this.

This isn't just important today, it'll be an issue in the future too. I'm playing with some eight bit kit. One needed a binary patch to handle dates after Y2K. Another, proving more complex will need sorting to get it to talk to a modern harddisc. If you have the code and a compiler for it, such things are possible. Otherwise... And who knows what may turn up in the next decade? Or crazy projects to port "your favourite OS" to some esoteric kit...?